Idle Gossip

Once their plan of action had been decided, Rends the Gar set off to find a cart and horse team to carry their hard earned prize back home. Wanting to take a break from her constant scouting, Ebony trailed after him mostly keeping to herself. Rends was fine with that; he had a lot on his mind.

They found a suitable Wagon behind one of the burnt down houses. Figuring it wouldn't be missed, Rends pulled the Wagon out and started inspecting it for rust and cracks in the wood. His knife and club jabbed 8th his side as he lay on the ground but he didn't mind. He was just glad to have them back. Ebony hopped onto the Wagon above, sitting on the side, managing to convey a look of boredom even in Corvid form.

"I never did thank ya. Fer helpin' out let night. We may never have found our gear if it weren't fer you. So thanks."

There was a rustle of black wings above Rends, and then a pale, thin-faced young woman was lounging in the seat. "Don't mention it. I don't follow you around just to look pretty." Ebony shifted her weight and propped her feet up on the edge of the buckboard, letting the bleary red morning sun fall on her narrow frame before it drifted up beyond the sprawl of grey clouds that shrouded the sky from view. "You folks were sure stupid back there, you know." The biting tone was absent in her voice. It was just a stated fact, free of frustration or anger.

"Girl you don't know the half of it..."

The back wheels and axel seemed fine so Rends slid up to the font.

"I kinda hope the town remembers last night jest so we can burn this place and go home with nobody but us even remembering this hellhole. Then Eaton can jest do his thing and pretty up the story."

He gives the Corax a curious look. Or rather he gives the bottom of her boots a curious look.

"You ain't gonna tell everyone how bad we fucked up are ya? I mean I know you didn't really make a lot of friends when we was in Nacadoches, and you's normally pretty quiet but I always heard Corax is real big gossips. Hell my pa once told me he kilt one cuz it didn't shut up fer a week and followed him everywhere."

He slides out from under the wagon, dusting himself off. He then seems to realize what he may have been implying.

"Uh, not that we'd kill ya or nothin. We like ya. Unless you became a bane or somethin'. Then I'd kill ya. But I'd be real sad."

"You want more killing, huh? Can't say I am surprised. That's what you wolves are good at, after all." Ebony sniggered at her next thought. "Way I see it, if you are going to fight, do it with both claws. Enemies that are dead can't come back to bite your ass later... usually."

When Rends-the-Gar mentioned other Corax, the pale woman let out a harsh, short laugh. "Most of my kind are idiots, Clemons." Rends could hear the venom in her voice, but Ebony just kept looking straight ahead, her keen reddish eyes staring at a fixed spot in the distance. "They are all backbiting noisemakers, too flighty to understand that sometimes even were-ravens have to take a stand..." She snapped out of her reverie and smiled wanly at Rends. "I guess that sounds pretty hollow, seeing as how I left Judge Bean in a lurch back in Vinegaroon..."

Rends chuckles, reaching over to slap her shoulder in comraderie. He pulls the slap this time, making it more of a pat a she cringes in anticipation.

"Damn straight. If nothin else it makes it so next time yous fightin spaghetti instead of the same old bane. Bean... He was a different sort. It sounds fine on the surface looking out for youself, but wolves work best in packs. And a man need something higher to fight for to tide you over when there's nothing fun to kill."

He takes a drink from his flask and offers it to her.

"Corax are pretty rare but you seem to have a strong opinion o them. You known many?"

"Mmm." After relaxing after Rends' relatively soft blow, the Corax made a grunt of affirmation and fished around in her pocket for a moment before withdrawing a cigar that smelled of birch and aged tar. "The Judge wasn't interested in any lofty ideals, that's for sure. He just wanted to rule his little sad-sack tent city and be left alone by the rest of Gaia's deluded warriors." Ebony chomped down on the unlit cigar with the curious expression of bored tenacity. "Can't say I blamed him for wanting to get away. I guess we had that in common."

"I've known enough of my kind to know when I've had enough. There is a pretty big flock out towards Santa Fe, and they are all favor-currying lackwits. Nothing but scavengers, following after whoever offers the chance at the most loot, be it dirty secrets or shiny shit." The sun had disappeared into the low-hanging clouds, but even in the dull grey light Ebony's pink eyes burned brightly with anger.

Rends shook his head, trying to imagine the dour albino associating with such apparent dunces. He stuffed and lit his own pipe, offering the starter to Ebony.

"Dirty secrets and shiny shit eh? Well we got plenty of those round here, or at least wes good gossip. But you obviously ain't here fer that. And as much as you talk tough, yous always good to help with the dirty work. But why? You that one Corax whose in it fer more than gossip and buttons? Could it be the stony Ebony is a real believer?"

His voice is void of mocking, his tone one of affable amusement and sarcasm.

Ebony clenched the cigar in her teeth and craned her neck to take advantage of Rends' proffered light. As she smoked she closed her strange watery red eyes and murmured "Believer? Ha, hardly; disillusioned, more like."  

"Our flock got involved in a long, slow-cooking war that wasn't even our fight to begin with. I don't know how it started exactly, and I am not sure it matters. I didn't see the point of it, and I had a bit of a falling out with the rest of the flock. So I left and ended up in Vinegaroon." The Corax didn't look at Rends- she just stared straight ahead, talking around the cigar as it slowly and methodically burned down.

"I guess what I am saying is that gossip and buttons are fine... but I am not willing to kill to get them."

Rends listened, nodding along with the story as he slowly puffed his pipe.

"I used ta think my job was jest to kill everything that stood in my way, but after a while that started to feel shallow. It weren't enough. I had ta find something to kill for, something to defend."

He shruggs, then waves back in the general direction of the town.

"My pack is what I fight for. And for the glory of my tribe. But mostly to defend the people I care about."

He puts a bug hand on her shoulder, maybe a little harder than a more gentle natured man would in such a friendly gesture.

"Maybe you jest need someone to fight for too."

Ebony sat in silence, taking the rare puff on the cigar. She finally ground it out on the side of the wagon. "Maybe I already have."

Ebony's eyes had a faraway look. "When I was a fledgling, barely past my first change, I discovered a dried up old mine deep in the Sierra Guadalupe. There are lots of deep holes and caves out there, and I liked exploring the bigger ones- since Papa Helios and I have some love lost between us. This one caught my interest straight away- I saw a bit of gold winking at me just inside the mouth of the mine." The Corax's voice was hoarse, but that might have just been the cigar smoke in her throat.

"I thought I'd hit pay dirt, but on taking a closer look, it wasn't a raw nugget, but a ring- and a damn intricate one at that. Pictographs, glyphs, showing a swarm of flying creatures turning into a man."

"Well, that piqued my interest. Others birds, more experienced and paranoid members of my kind, might have expected walking dead or name-mockers, but I was just curious, so I meandered my way inside..." The wereraven stirred from her reverie and looked at Rends. "Sorry, I'm not used to talking this much. I hope I'm not boring you to tears."

Rends had been listening closely, puffing away contentedly on his pipe.

"Nah. I usually like stories with more fightin' and stuff, but what was a ring like that doing out there?"

"Well, alright. I didn't know it then, but that ring turned out to be Aztec. At that moment, I just figured that it didn't look like Spanish work, and that was enough to send me scrambling down into the half-darkness. The mine was pretty deep, a steep-angled but straight shaft going down into the mountains. I didn't find much else in there, other than dry guano and support beams shot through with dry-rot. The path ended abruptly in a jagged heap where the ceiling had given way with only a long narrow crack along the bottom, running almost the width of the shaft. There might have been a deeper passage, but all the same, my survival instinct had begun to catch up with my curiosity. This creaky mine was ancient- maybe a hundred years had passed since the Conquistadors had abandoned the place. The sun was setting behind me and the possibility of fumbling my way back out or worse, dying in a cave-in, was not very appealing."

"Just as I am turning back toward the failing light, I hear this feeble scratching noise behind me. It is coming from the other side of the rubble. Out from one of the more jagged clefts in the stone I can hear a scrabbling and a belabored breathing. I don't really know what to do- so I just sort of sit there, paralyzed by a combination of dread and curiosity. Then it goes quiet for a moment, and the shadows are getting long, so I turn away again and this time there is a small explosion of rock and gravel and a leathery arm ending in a clawed, webbed hand is thrusting through the large crack, trying to pry it up and open. I could tell it was futile. The sharp rocks cut into the forarm and fingers, and after a few moments of struggling, the sandy bottom of the cave was speckled with blood. Whatever the arm belonged to seemed to tire, and the arm stretched out and just sort of lay there. I could hear the thing panting, and harsh sobbing sounds filled with frustrated rage."

"To this day I don't know why, but I went over and just put my hand on its claw. I knew a lightweight like me couldn't move those stones, even in rara avis form. I just knew I would hate to be trapped in a some pit without any chance of escape. So I just sat there like a moron and patted the cave monster's talon-like hand."

It must have smelled me or something, because it didn't act surprised or tense up and withdraw or anything. Instead, it sort of slid away and started making symbols in the dust, but I couldn't read them. I have pretty good eyesight, but you try to decipher blindly drawn hand-symbols in the dirt at dusk at the bottom of a mineshaft... it isn't easy. I ended up tracing his hand motions with my own, and I realized he was trying to draw something like an arrow and a circle."

Ebony tapped the side of her nose. "He wanted that ring I had found at the entrance."

"Now, don't consider myself to be incredibly greedy, but that ring was my first loot worth more than a silver dollar. It was the sort of find that can earn a lot of respect among the flock. This poor doomed critter wanted it, but what good would it do him? I almost left him, reasoning that maybe I could find him help later after I had garnered the renown from shiny gold."

"Instead, I put it down on the ground and placed his hand over it. Quick as you please, he jerked that sucker back into the blackness and I heard a... well, it is hard to describe what that noise was exactly like. It was like high, chittering, melodious yell, not a laugh or singing but somehow similar, and it was as if more and more falsetto voices were joining in the chorus. If that seems odd, imagine actually being there to hear it. I almost bolted, when I spot movement among the rocks and sharp stones. Out from under the bottom of the rubble hundreds of bats suddenly came swarming out, some crawling, others taking wing as soon as they could. Within seconds the mine was full of them. They surrounded me for a moment, and I could feel their tiny leathery wings and muzzles against my arms and neck before they disappeared out into the darkening sky."

The albino gave Rends-the-Gar a tight smile. "I'd met my first and only Camazotz."

Rends stood silent, pipe hanging forgotten from his mouth as she continued on with her story. He shakes his head when she reveals what she did with the ring.

"If that thing really wanted the ring it would a held onto it. Since it didn't it didn't have any right to it. I'd a kept it and dug up whatever that thing was. Let it fight fer it's prize if it wants it so bad. What was it though? Some bat critter? And how did that give you purpose?"